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In article , "Ryan, KC8PMX"
writes: "Mike Coslo" wrote in message ... Ryan, KC8PMX wrote: People in their 50's, 60's, and older have a different view of radio, as it was more of an important part of their lives that it is today for people. Back then for them, radio was more of a primary entertainment and/or information source than it is now, be it listening only or transcieving. Ryan, allow an observation from one of those "older" folks... :-) Radio _broadcasting_ was a kind of entertainment in the 1940s and before. It was unique to all. No need to leave the house. Everyone heard the same program at the same time and those programs could be discussed in-person with others right afterwards. News and important events could be broadcast immediately, no waiting for the next day or next week to read about it in a newspaper. By 1950 television broadcasting was firmly established and this revised the way "radio" was thought about. Television brought live or recorded images along with sound and the impact on viewers was greater than with just sound broadcasting. With old sound-only radio listeners could only imagine the environment surrounding a show. Their imaginations played a greater role in their emotional likes or dislikes about a show. By 1960 the non-broadcasting radio applications were spreading, such as two-way mobile radio becoming common with public safety organizations and large businesses, now well established as an important communications tool. Microwave radio relay was also firmly established for national communications linking for everything from telephone long-distance to television networking. The first of the communications satellites were already lofted for wideband, multi- user communications and more were coming and launched. Telephones now had direct-dial capability all over the country and extending to much of the rest of the world. It was in, it was working, it was a fact of daily life. By 1960 aural-only radio broadcasting had shifted output focus. The old radio programs were going if not gone to the new magic of television. "Radio" in the common vernacular became the news over the car radio, pop music to break up the monotony of a commute, background sounds while in a residence...relatively lesser in importance compared to TV. By 1970 mobile two-way radio was a necessity for police, fire, medical emergency services, businesses doing vehicular delivery or needing fast routing for pickups, taxicabs. The first of the solid-state handheld trans- ceivers had appeared that was economical for almost all small to large businesses in walk-around utility work to construction sites to dockyard cargo movement to motion picture location shooting coordination, to name a just a few. "Two-way radio" was familiar to almost all Americans by now, whether by seeing it in daily life or on television shows. By 1980 the first trials of cellular telephony had begun, in "car phones" first. "Funny-looking" antenna shapes (at cell sites) were sprouting in urban areas. "Cordless" telephones for the home and office appeared as hardware operating frequencies went higher and higher in VHF and UHF bands. Color television broadcasting was firmly established and important events were being organized around TV scheduling needs. Videotape units for the home were available for recording TV...with timers for automatic recording. Videotape boxes had bulti-in TV tuners. By 1990 the desktop personal computer was a part of business life and offices had wired computing networks. The wireless network had appeared to eliminate wiring. Cellular telephony was firmly established and growing explosively in the communications industry. Information theory had matured and, with newer complex ICs, could provide more secure digital communications on WLANs. Data and facsimile comm was now available over mobile radios (data terminals in larger PD patrol cars, remote EKG transmission from ambulances). "Cell phones" was a term in the public vernacular. TV tuners as PC peripheral cards had appeared. The Compact Disk recording medium had been standardized and CD players were on the consumer market. Shirt-pocket sized AM and FM radios had become so popular that makers were competing in external color styling rather than in reception quality. Handheld two-way radios had shrunk to true one-hand operation and offered tone signalling for a variety of ways, from CTCSS to DTMF on built-in keyboards. By 2000 "consumer electronics" was a separate branch in consumer chains. The words "PC" or "Mac," "CD" and "cable [TV]" and "Internet" and "cell" and "dot-com" and "spam" and "mouse" and even "CB" were all well-known and recognized by the public. Cell phones were so numerous that one in four Americans had cellular telephone subscriptions, either personal or business (that would become one in three by the end of 2002). Cordless telephones were now digital and in the 2.4 GHz band. The maritime world had adopted the GMDSS, used voice and data modes ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore and VHF two-way radios in harbor areas, commercial land private water vehicles alike. Marine radar small enough to be used on small motorboats had appeared in 1974. The EPIRB was an established emergency device for both waterborne and airborne vehicles. Civil aviation had VHF AM radio for nearly a half century along with VHF to UHF radionavigation aids of many kinds. Local government agencies and businesses used "trunking" to conserve EM space in their already crowded spectrum allocations. GPSS, already in place for the military, was now available in consumer stores, small enough for easy carry in hiking with accuracy almost to that of military secure standards. The geo- synchronous communications satellite orbit positions were now filled to safe capacity, covering all parts of the world. The first of the radio clocks (tradenamed "to atomic standards") had appeared in consumer stores, automatically synchronizing with WWVB and using low-power DSP circuitry for greater-than-a-year battery operation in any of the states. "Wireless" no longer meant just radio but applied to any electronic device not needing wire connections in the home, from simple doorbell signalling to remote TV monitoring to baby monitors to networking home computers to keyboards and mice for personal computers to small microphone-earphone headsets to outside temperature sensors signalling digitally to an inside master unit. The public can buy a pair of FRS handheld UHF transceivers for less than $50, operate them without license up to 2 miles range and with digital voice and signalling mildly secure from other FRS users. Chain department stores at the K-Mart level regular sell CB kits for mobile use, all items shrinkwrapped together in the same package for less than $100. Cell phones got video capability, able to send images over the cell circuit to others in real time along with abbreviated messaging that was becoming a fad with teen agers. The belt-clipped pager receiver was both an important link in alerting and a sign of "self importance" to users. The standard small-unit military radio [hitting the quarter-million production quantity by 2002] was digital in voice and data, in-clear or secure, on-frequency or a frequency-hopper to reduce DF interception. GPS and other digital systems was starting to network land military units for real-time large-group movements on battlefields. Boomers and sharks in the Navy submarine fleet used secure data VLF-ELF alerting under water. Independent moving/relocating company vans have both GPS and cell phone map data couplers for finding routing and address locations. The ubiquitous CD flat disk has overpowered the old phonograph disk market, now cheap enough to use in throwaway advertising gimmicks in the mail and magazines. The CD-size DVD is rapidly overtaking the VHS video recording medium. In 2003 the consumer market has seen a steady market in radio- controlled toys to the extent of introducing matchbox-size R/C cars at $10 each. Cell phone oriented corporations are starting chain stores for cell phones and pagers, building PDAs into some of them and incorporated video cameras appearing to be a standard option. Flat-cased small portable color TV sets with LCD screens and all-electronic channel tuning (VHF through UHF) are available for less than $150. "Shortwave" is becoming almost an outmoded term but the consumer market still has SW BC radios with digital tuning and SSB receive capability, small, flat, easy to pack into suitcases. International SW broadcasting has started using digital modulation after several years of successful testing on HF. Larger departement stores have RFID systems of many kinds, the tags small and very cheap, adhesive-backed for attachment to all kinds of merchandise; the RFID "gates" are becoming a standard feature at main entrances. There are waterproof portable AM-FM receivers for use in showers, others small enough to become a part of lightweight ear-phones. Wireless microphones for the consumer market have passed the two-decade mark, are a standard part of stage and TV performer's wardrobe. The flat-screen TFT display is beginning to replace color CRTs with plasma displays for larger size TV screens flat enough, light enough to hang on a wall. Dog and cat collars are available for sensing electronic borders and warning the animal on proximity of such. There are experimental trials of implantable human ID tags working at radio frequencies to read out identity and medical information and history in the device. Radio astronomy is a standard scientific tool in astrophysics. Tens of thousands of volunteers around the world are part of the distributed computing effort of SETI, linking through the Internet to get data and sending the sorted data back. SETI uses only the "hydrogen line" frequency to search, already has discovered several locations having some kind of repetitive radio signal phenomena. Some electric power utilities are already using a form of carrier current communications to read subscribers' electric meters remotely, negating the need for human meter readers traveling to each subscriber. Some companies have meter readers equipped with handheld terminals for individual recording, some of those with digital radio or cell phone data forwarding to the central office. Overnight delivery services already have a version of that portable terminal as do some supermarkets. Anyone in the American public who can look around and obverve what is going on in the marketplace, in society, or reading newspapers and magazines can discover all or part of what I wrote above. "Radio" is much more far-reaching that just HF band activity...to the PUBLIC. They KNOW about it in general and its myriad uses. They've seen bits and pieces of information of devices and systems yet to come in the near future. So, in this arena there are some pro-morse-code-test advocates steadfastly clinging to the notion that a monotonic arythmic pattern representing English characters is "basic" to "radio" for the "future." It "must" be done so that all can use their imaginations (as in radio broadcasting of the 1940s) to discern the "personalities" of the code senders and develop "lifelong friendships" on the barest of data, devoid of all the normal clues available in normal in-person contact. All "must" know this basic communications means of the 1920s and 1930s radio so that they can be "acceptible" to a group of radio hobbyists "pioneering" the radioways for later generations' futures. Those later generations came, lived in that future and went on to even more futures...passing the imaginations of those hobbists still stuck in the standards and practices of pre-WW2 times. Those later generations, like yourself, live with accomplished advancements in many kinds of "radio" and can all relate to "radio" as a fact of existance. What the later generations seem to lack is _imagination_ of working communications slowly with a minimum of contact data of the sender and deriving the feelings of being a "master" of their craft all through a singular rhythmic pattern of monotonic sound. All to achieve the mighty importance of a federal hobbyist license in a "service" of avocation and recreation and personal pleasure. I've got a good imagination. Just can't see it like they do. Not even a half century ago when I got tossed into the Big Leagues of HF communications during a Real service to my country. The Real future was there back then and that bred even more fantastic futures in a wider range of "radio" applications later. Those futures are now our present. I'm anxious to see more of what Real imaginations come up with, and, hopefully, to enjoy those too! LHA |
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